When she was 15 years old Kristine Olsen’s father, veteran character actor Don “Red” Barry, took his own life. Kristine presents an honest and intimate portrait of the effects of his suicide, its aftermath, and the life-changing healing power that she found in participating in suicide survivor support programs. This real life saga is one of hope…of finding and walking a true path to healing, and an exploration of ways in which survivors of suicide can be better reached and helped. A discussion will follow where Kristine will share tools and resources to aid people on their own healing journeys.

***********

Don “Red” Barry, who starred as Western hero Red Ryder in a movie action serial in 1940, went on to become a character actor with numerous roles in films and television. He killed himself with a gunshot in Hollywood in 1980..
Olsen says she received no help following her father’s suicide beyond hearing about gradually enduring the five stages of grief. Suicide is far more complicated than that, she said. “You have added guilt, shame, embarrassment, misunderstanding from the community, religious aspects, financial aspects…. When you pile all of that on top of just your regular grief, it makes it very, very difficult without any kind of guidance at all,” she said in advance of her appearance at the forum..
Olsen said suicide kills about as many people in the United States each year as breast cancer, with many suicides going unreported, and while cancer rightfully gets a lot of attention, a fraction is spent on suicide and mental illness. “There seems to be still this strange taboo on the subject, she said. “My hope is to blow it up, get it out there and get people to start talking about it.”.Organizations like the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention did not exist in 1980, and it was not until 17 years after her father’s death that Olsen went to her first suicide support group.“Within the very first minute of being in that group, with people who truly understood what it felt like to lose someone to this, was life changing for me,” Olsen said. “I was asked questions that I couldn’t even have imagined.”(Interview by TOM BRONZINI)

Recent Posts

Thanks for the Memories

Rev. Nica Eaton-GuinnNovember 25

Services at 9:15 & 11:00
Memories can be sweet or bitter, and sometimes both. This goes for collective memory, those stories and recollections of a people that provide meaning for us in our culture, and it goes for the individual. Whether we think of a holiday like Thanksgiving and all its ambivalences that we had this week, or whether it’s the remembered experiences that shape us as individuals, our emotional centers bring us back, again and again, to places of joy and pain. Can we use all of them to move into a better place, a place of wholeness and healing?